Manish Chokhani: The perfect insider

As a child, Manish Chokhani went to a school where the stock market was a natural progression.

The Mumbai-based Hindi Vidhya Bhavan on Marine Lines, where Chokhani received his primary education, boasts of former students the likes of Rakesh Jhunjhunwalla, Uday Kotak, Vallabh Bhansali and many others from the well-to-do Marwari and Gujarati communities.

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An MBA from the London School of Business and a chartered accountant, Chokhani was drawn to stock broking by Bhansali.

It so happened that the Bhansalis - founders of Enam Group - were helping the Chokhanis sell their family flexible packaging business when Manish met Vallabh.

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After 17 years at Enam, the 44-year-old Chokhani is known as the "perfect insider" to happenings on the bourses.

From equity research to sales and asset management, he worked on all the verticals at Enam before being made the chief executive officer of Enam Securities, which was recently sold to Axis Bank.

Chokhani made a cool Rs 168 crore (Rs 1.68 billion) in the deal, as he held over 8 per cent stake in the company.

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Although the list of his stock discoveries is long, his top - and best known - market prediction was one he made in 2008.

The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex was trading at around the 8,000-mark in October after a freefall from its lifetime high of 21,000.

Enam predicted that the index would rise to 15,000 by Diwali 2009.

And it did exactly that. Chokhani was the architect of the report.

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Friends say Chokhani is a curious mix of contrasts.

Tall, but not intimidating; soft-spoken, but aggressive; and he demands to see value in a stock, even though he may swear by growth investing.

Market players say, even while he managed to captain a ship after losing key people at the institutional broking business at Enam, maintaining the same growth pace with new partner Axis may prove a challenge.